Moving Day and Beyond! Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

I think while blogging about our trip cross country, I'm going to take things slow and not rush through them, blogging only a few states at a time. There's so much to write about and pictures to upload it gets to be overwhelming...so here goes:

After days and days of hard work, little sleep and lots of stress, we packed everything up and took off Saturday, July 23rd, around 5PM. After Anson Jr. came home from Trek that is. (and what's left of his straw hat).

Here's a picture (HDR) I took of our vehicle when the sun was setting. (At a rest stop somewhere in Oregon).

We made it as far as Ontario, Oregon that night (at 2AM) and pulled into the only hotel in that town - The Budget Inn. It was ugly and disgusting but we were so tired and really didn't have any other choice. You see the bright blue of the doors? That was the color of our bathtub and toilet.



The next day, we drove from 10:30AM-6:30PM almost running out of gas along the way)...to get to our reunion in Ashton, Idaho at The Squirrel Creek Ranch.  Anson and I had a room with a King sized bed, our own bathroom and a balcony we share with a room next to ours. The kids slept on cots we use for camping. The kids went exploring, saw some albino buffalo and got bit up by mosquitoes right away. The had fun firing their BB guns, playing with their cousins, paint balling and running around.

The night before the end of the reunion I drove down the street and took a picture of this abandoned farm house as the sun was setting.

After we left the reunion, we stopped at this other abandoned farm house and I got some pictures of it.

So much blogging to do.....

BUT, I'm at a point right now where blogging is such a big chore! Sometimes I really enjoy it and and other times I just don't feel it. It comes and goes and right now it's gone! Hopefully I'll find it soon.

No more furniture

It's been a week since we sold our dining room and living room set. The house felt so empty, but now it's filled with piles of boxes headed to storage, boxes for the D.I., and boxes of things we're still sorting. One week before we leave and our house is a complete disaster! How did we manage to accumulate this much stuff? I mean seriously. There's no reason to have all this useless stuff and I'm glad to be getting rid of it now so that we don't have to lug it around for the next move.

Crazy Camping Trip

So we have less than two weeks before we start our journey towards the East Coast and we are not going to take Anson's piano cross country. He's going to store it at his mom's house, so the piano that she has is going to Anson's sister's house. We get the wonderful task of transferring them both and since Kathy lives pretty close to the beach we decided to take the opportunity to go camping one last time here the the Great NW! I'm not going to go into detail, but let me just say that it was a big pain to do and we still have a piano sitting downstairs.

We didn't get to the beach until about 6:30PM and started setting up camp. After we had everything set up we went to plug in something and it had the wrong kind of outlet. We found another site that had the right power source, packed everything back up in the trailer and moved. Instead of taking down the tent and setting it back up, Sr. and Jr. carried it up the hill and to our new site. It was pretty funny!

The pool was closed for cleaning that day which the kids were disappointed about but by the time we got done setting up camp they would have had only 45 minutes to swim before the pool closed. The plan for that night was for the kids to sleep in the tent, Sr to sleep in the trailer and because I didn't want to leave the boys alone, I was going to sleep in the tent with them. We were watching a movie in the trailer and I started getting tired so I went to go lay down. I can't remember why, but Sr. said that everybody is going to sleep in the trailer now (maybe he thought it would be too cold). So once again, we take everything out of the tent and switch it with stuff from the trailer. (food, microwave, tv, table, etc.). Once we were all situated the wood smell of the trailer (because it was new and hadn't been cured yet) started bothering Anson...but had bothered me all night. Needless to say, we didn't sleep so well. The boys had no problem though. The next morning I had a terrible migraine and no medicine. The "store" at the campground didn't open until 10AM, so I hopped in the front seat of the car, where it was quiet and dark and napped off and on until my medicine kicked in. I was then able to get up and shower and eat.

After lunch we headed down to Cape Kiwanda where the kids love to climb the sand dunes. We had a lot of fun but weren't prepared because we didn't bring food or drink. I would have loved to have stayed longer though.

After Anson Sr.'s nap time, he and I headed up the dunes and took some pictures of the beautiful view.

After the beach, we went back to the campground and played some putt putt golf.

That night we roasted marshmallows, made s'mores, and watched another movie outside by the fire pit. It was a great day and night.

We all slept better in the tent and packed up and headed for home by noon. Originally we planned on staying an extra day, but we ran out of food! We could have gone to Fred Meyer's in Tillamook but the kids wanted to go home....oh well. Sr. and I wanted to stay the extra day, but the kids won. All in all it was a nice trip.

Corier/Tolman Reunion 2011

This last weekend we went to the Corier/Tolman reunion at Camp Bethel near Humptulips, Washington. We left our dog, Lucy, with Sarah and her family, took the kids out of school Friday and head out for a weekend of fun and relaxation. We sold our RV a few months ago, so we decided to bring our tent (instead of stay in the lodge or cabin) and pitched it right next to my parents tent. Anson bought he and I padded cots to sleep on, and  we brought our electric blankets and small portable space heater to keep warm. And we did stay warm! Unfortunately my parents froze all night, so we gave them our heater the second night and they were able to stay warm too.

Saturday we went to Ocean Shores and let the kids  go go-carting which is something they do every year. We decided not to go to the beach though because it was pretty cold and we didn't feel like dealing with sand and the kids always seem to get wet when we tell them not to. The boys weren't to disappointed that we skipped it.

Later that night we had an auction. People bring stuff to auction off and we use that money to buy all the food for next years reunion so it keeps the cost down. I brought a framed 11x14 picture that I took of the Portland, Oregon Temple and that went for $38. I only meant for 1 to auction, but people asked if I had more which I did in the car (unframed) and bought the remainder 3 I had for $30 each. That's great and all but that money went into the family fund. Kind of sucks because we won't even be here next year for that reunion and it would have been nice to make a little money to pay for the printing of those pictures but whatever. I know better now.

The kids had a blast like they always do playing on the swings, playing frisbee, capture the flag, canoeing on the lake and whatever else they did. It's total freedom for them all weekend. We did have an incident of Ashton falling in the lake when he was trying to get out of the boat and onto the dock. He came back to the tent completely drenched from head to toe and covered in mud. Luckily the water wasn't too deep and from what I was told he was wearing a life jacket. Somebody falls in the lake every year...

It was fun but I was ready to go home. Here are a few pictures I took on the road from that weekend.